


Change, Like Sunshine

by still_lycoris



Category: Firefly
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Flirting, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-09-30 20:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris
Summary: When Wash first joined the crew, he thought Zoe was Mal's lady. He was quite wrong about that.





	Change, Like Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Changes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/76327) by [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain). 

When Wash first took the job, he was pretty sure that Zoë was the Captain’s lady.

It just seemed a logical guess. Zoë was beautiful, the Captain was a pretty handsome man and they were working together hiring a pilot for their ship. It seemed likely they were dating or married or all the millions of things in-between. He just hoped that they wouldn’t decide to break up before he’d managed to get a bit of pay under his belt. This ship looked like it’d be fun to fly and he’d get to see loads of new places. Nothing had to be more complicated than that.

He wasn’t quite sure when he worked out they weren’t. Just at some point, it hit him that no, Zoë and Mal weren’t together except in a partners-in-crime kinda way. He didn’t really worry about it. It was just one of those things that you just sort of learn and go “Oh, okay then.” Mal and Zoë weren’t dating, that was fine. Mal probably wished he was cause, well, Zoë was gorgeous, what right-thinking straight man wouldn’t want to be with her? But maybe she had someone else in mind or maybe she just didn’t date, that was a thing too. Didn’t matter too much to Wash. Meant there was no chance of a sticky breakup that might ruin his chances here and meant he could just get on with things.

He had a faint idea that Zoë didn’t actually like him that much, which was something else that didn’t surprise him. There were some people, like Kaylee, that everybody liked pretty much they minute they met them. There were some people, like Mal, who you didn’t really _know_ when you met them and you didn’t really know when you’d known them for a while and you either liked what you saw of them, or you didn’t and you just had to lump it. Wash considered himself to be in the middle of those two categories – you mostly knew him the minute you met him but you sometimes needed time to warm up to him, to get used to his style. He sometimes tried to dial it back a bit when he was getting to know people but he’d never actually been very good at that.

“What’re all these things on the flight deck?”

“They’re my dinosaurs.”

“Dinosaurs?”

Zoë didn’t say it with total disgust, which was an improvement over some people. Wash gave her his brightest smile.

“Yeah. There’s plenty of space for them, don’t worry!”

“Wasn’t worried. Wasn’t really thinking about them at all, ‘cept that the Captain is probably going to remind you that this is a working ship, not a play pen.”

“I’m working,” Wash protested. “They’re just ... watching. Decoratively. Gives the cockpit a sense of reality, you know?”

One of Zoë’s eyebrows quirked and he had a feeling that he saw a smile flicker at the side of her mouth. Really quick and then it was gone, but it had definitely been there. She leaned over and picked up the stegosaurus, inspecting him.

“Reality, huh?”

“You’d better put him back in just the right place,” Wash said. “I get all riled up when people mess up my toys. Like a rabid animal.”

Her eyebrows were raising more and more and he just knew that that smile of hers was hiding under her mouth, trying real hard to break free so he kept going.

“Yeah, really. I’m scary. There’s yelling, screaming, a bit of wild flailing, the works. Not so much dribble though, even when I’m really mad, I stay classy.”

It worked. She laughed. Wash wasn’t really sure he’d heard her laugh before. It was a nice sound, deep and rich and hard not to join in with. She put the stegosaurs back down – deliberately a few inches out of place.

“Well, maybe we’ll have to get a whip to keep you in line,” she said.

Now _that_ was definitely a comment you could take as flirting and Wash could feel himself blushing. He wasn’t quite sure if he should flirt back or not. Zoë was second mate, after all. He didn’t want to go mucking about in the hierarchy or make anything uncomfortable or weird. He was pretty sure that the captain wouldn’t like it if Wash upset his best friend. So he went for the light approach, shrugging his shoulders.

“Might need a cage as well. Just to be on the safe side.”

“I’ll be sure to let the captain know,” she said and headed out. Wash waited till she was pretty definitely well away before moving the stegosaurus back into position. Not that it really needed to be exact, or anything. Just that it needed to be near the lagoon. Then he thought a bit about Zoë’s surprisingly nice smile and decided that it was fun to make her laugh and maybe he’d have another go at it.

There seemed to be suddenly a lot of opportunities for that. He didn’t think Zoë had ever avoided him, just been busy elsewhere but now, she seemed to pop up quite often. Not in a weird way, it just happened to be that she was in the same part of the ship as him, looking at what he was doing, usually making some sort of comment on it. The comments were never mean but there was always a space for Wash to respond to them in whichever way he might want to. Which was usually funny, of course. He knew that he was a funny guy. If the Captain was around, he tended to roll his eyes like Wash wasn’t funny at all but though Zoë didn’t always laugh, Wash had started to spot that secret smile on her mouth more and more.

He wasn’t quite sure when the whole thing got to be dating. He just noticed sometime that they were spending lots of their time together, even planetside and he was still making her laugh, only they were talking about important things too, stuff about life that he didn’t generally tell people about and she wasn’t laughing at him, she was listening and sometimes telling him life stuff back.

Really, what gave away that it _was_ dating was that Mal got huffy about it. He started frowning at them and muttering things about how a ship needed a smooth flow in the crew and he didn’t want to be hearing any breakups that would mess up jobs.

“Ignore him,” Zoë said. “He gets a bee in his bonnet sometimes.”

“Yeah, but it is his ship,” Wash said, a little doubtful. “I mean, captains make the rules, right?”

He wondered if he would stop seeing Zoë if the Captain actually ordered it, rather than just sulked loudly about it. Or more importantly, would Zoë stop seeing him? She really cared about Mal, he knew that. Would she pick him over the Captain?

He felt a bit bad for thinking about it.

“No captain makes a rule about who I do or don’t see,” Zoë said firmly. “He’ll get used to it.”

Then she gave him a kiss and that was the end of that cause there were clearly better things that they could do right then than talk about stuff that Zoë had made her up her mind about anyway. Not that Mal seemed to quite get that message but then, he was the Captain so had dibs on that sort of thing. Wash tried not to take it personally. Anyway, Zoë was worth it.

He wanted the proposal to be a big, romantic thing, something super-special but of course, it didn’t happen like that. All the work, all the planning ... and he ended up asking her to marry him while they were both drowning in a swamp, trying to keep their heads above the filthy water.

She said yes anyway. She said “Yes, of course, you fool.” and gave him the most wonderful smile and even though they were both covered in dirt and Wash was thinking they might die any minute, it was still the happiest moment of his life. 

“Zoë and Hoban Alleyne,” he said, sitting on the grass after it was all over, trying to clean mud off himself and failing.

“Hoban Alleyne?” Zoë repeated, wrinkling her nose.

“What? What’s wrong with it?”

“Not sure I want to be married to a man whose name sounds like it’s tryin’ to clean something.”

Wash couldn’t help laughing.

“I mean, everyone calls me Wash so I mean, you may be stuck there.”

She laughed too and put an arm around him, warming him right up.

“It just don’t have the right ring to it somehow. You really want to change your name?”

“I don’t care either way,” he said. “I just kind of assumed that you wouldn’t want to change yours.”

She dug him in the side.

“Don’t you go assuming about me. Maybe I like Washburne, you ever think of that.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. I do. Because it’s yours.”

She smiled that wonderful smile at him and Wash smiled back. He loved her. He loved her more than anything and somehow, she loved him too.

You couldn’t ask for more than that in the whole wide verse.


End file.
